Denver, Colorado
I knew that my seatmate yesterday was going to be trouble. He was a big, shaggy man with a wild gray beard wearing an Australian bush hat. “I’m from Vancouver,” he told the woman in front of me, talking, already, to anyone who would listen. “I’m Canadian, see, but I just spent a week in Bolivia.”
“Oh,” the woman responded, “Bolivia.” She said it in a way that meant “I’m so glad I’m not sitting next to you.”
“I go for work,” the man continued. “I’m an engineer so I’m there once every three months or so.”
The woman settled down in her seat and the man leaned forward so as to continue their conversation. “You probably think it’s dangerous, but it’s not. I mean, you don’t want to be a gringo in Colombia—that’s taking your life in your hands—but they like us in Bolivia.”
“Well, that’s good,” the woman said.
“I suppose it helps that I speak a little espa?ol, but even if I didn’t, I think I’d probably get along fine, at least in my field.”
“Um-hmm.”
“Up in Canada we learn French, but that’s not going to get you anywhere in South America, I can tell you that.”
“Is it just me,” the woman said, “or is it really early?”
The man said that his journey had begun ten hours before. His flight from La Paz had been delayed and he’d missed his scheduled connection, which was supposed to leave at seven a.m. Now it was eight thirty and he’d just gotten his second wind.
The plane was only half full. There was an empty seat between us and the moment I sat down, the man lifted his armrest, the airplane equivalent of opening your front gate. “So where do you come from?” he asked.
No, no, no, no, no, I thought. It’s one thing to ask a question as you’re landing at your destination, but under no circumstances do you begin a flight with a conversation. I wanted to say, You have to move. Now. But I’m too much of a coward. The best I could do was pretend to fall asleep, and even that didn’t shut him up. “I can’t sleep on planes,” he said. “Don’t know what it is, but I just can’t.”
The movie was K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford as a Soviet submarine captain. It wasn’t the type of thing I would normally go for, but the headphones were my only way out. My neighbor chose not to watch, or, rather, not to listen.
His version was silent and every few minutes he’d tap me on the shoulder. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been in a Russian submarine. They had one docked in Vancouver and there’s no way on earth Harrison Ford could have stood upright, not at his size. And cramped? The thing was tiny. It’s just not possible.”
Back at the terminal I’d begun a crossword puzzle, working it, as I normally do, section by section, beginning in the upper-left-hand corner. On boarding I’d placed it on the empty seat beside me, and toward the end of the flight I looked over to find the man holding it. “I see it got the best of you,” he said.
No Thursday puzzle will ever get the best of me, but I said, “Actually, I’m not finished with it yet.”
I turned back to the movie and again he tapped me on the shoulder. “I think seventeen down is supposed to be gigolo,” he said.
Yes, and ten across is shut the fuck up, I wanted to say. Had I woken to find him fondling me I could have lived with it, but you don’t touch another man’s puzzle. I was tempted to call for the flight attendant, but instead, of course, I thanked him. “If you’ll just give me back my pencil, I’ll write it in,” I said.
A moment later he tapped me to tell me that the movie had ended. “You’re watching an empty screen,” he said. “Boy, you really must be exhausted.”
“Oh, I am,” I said. “You have no idea.”
October 19, 2002
San Francisco
At a drugstore in Denver I bought a pack of typing paper. The woman in front of me tried to pay with a credit card and, when that didn’t work, a check. Had she paid with cash I never would have noticed she was missing an ear. It wasn’t gone entirely, there was still something there, but it wasn’t much, a little lump of flesh.
October 21, 2002
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
At the Denver airport there’s a display labeled MEXICAN SOUVENIR ALERT. In the case was a python belt, a coffee mug made from elephant hide, a leopard pelt, and two taxidermied frogs hoisting steins at a miniature bar. The mug, belt, and rug were made from endangered species, but I never understood the alcoholic frogs. What was wrong with them?
October 24, 2002
New York
We had dinner at Le Pescadou, a French restaurant on 6th Avenue. The menu was ridiculous and included such items as:
Seared Tuna Embraced by Sesame
Baby Pasta Ears Listening to Artichoke
Grilled Prawns Frolicking on Polenta
October 28, 2002
New York
Driving to Greencastle we passed cars with bumper stickers reading CHARLTON HESTON IS MY PRESIDENT and JESUS LOVES YOU. EVERYONE ELSE THINKS YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE. We passed a gun shop advertising a “Blowout Sale.”
While listening to a country music station, we heard a talk/song narrated by our flag. “I flew proudly at Iwo Jima and on the blistering deserts of Kuwait, anywhere freedom is threatened, you will find me.” The flag recounted being torn into strips to bandage wounded soldiers and then it explained how it hurts to be burned and trampled by the very people it works so hard to protect. When given a voice, our flag is not someone you’d choose to spend a lot of time with.
October 30, 2002
New York
After returning from New York, Dad called Lisa to tell her he was sick. “I have a flu,” he said. “What should I take?” Lisa suggested he wait it out, but that wasn’t good enough. “How about NyQuil?” he asked. “Doesn’t Vicks make something?” Lisa said that when Bob gets sick he sometimes takes an antibiotic. “But I don’t know that it really does any good,” she said.
A few hours later Dad called again. The vet had put his Great Dane, Sophie, on antibiotics, and, figuring that it was all basically the same thing, he had started taking them. “I’m just not sure of the dose,” he said.
Lisa then called me. “Can you believe this?” I thought she was upset that her father was taking pills meant for a dog, and then I remembered who I was talking to. “I mean, how is Sophie supposed to get any better when Dad is taking all her medicine? I just don’t think that’s right.”
November 5, 2002
Paris
Steven sent the New York Observer article along with a short mention in Publishers Weekly. In the first I’m described as looking “not unlike a leprechaun,” my head “barely poking up over the podium.” In the second I’m referred to as both “sprightly” and “diminutive,” making it sound as if I could sleep in an empty matchbox.
November 16, 2002